Obtaining financing is vitally important for renewable energy and other capital-intensive cleantech projects. These projects are typically high-leveraged, with up to 70-80% of the project total being financed through dept. That’s why the availability of financing and loan’s terms and conditions play a crucial role in project’s feasibility and profitability. From the lender’s perspective, when […]
Over the last decade we have seen a steady development of renewable energy technologies in most high-innovative countries. As the result, today there are hundreds of companies commercializing their unique cleantech technologies and services, and many of them are already well established regionally and nationally. But in order to fully reap the rewards of their […]
A large number of clean energy technologies, from wind turbines and energy-efficient lighting to electric vehicles and thin-film solar cells, are made with materials that have unique chemical and physical characteristics, including magnetic, catalytic and luminescent properties. In 2011 the U.S. Department of Energy has identified five rare-earth materials – neodymium, europium, terbium, dysprosium and […]
Today, a big number of cleantech companies are not working well. In the past few years a lot of green startups filed for bankruptcy, because they couldn’t find a way to capitalize their technological innovations. One of the major causes of these failures is that many cleantech companies still behave as traditional equipment manufacturers, randomly […]
During the 20th century, worldwide material consumption increased in eight times. By 2050, global resource use is expected to have tripled. Throughout its evolution, our industrial economy has been following a linear model. It means that the economy mostly consumes resources extracted from our natural environment (such as fossil fuels, aggregates, minerals and forest products), […]
Open innovation has been a hot topic in the business world since its introduction by Professor H. Chesbrough in 2003. Having initially evolved in technology and consumer goods corporations (like IBM and P&G), the open innovation paradigm is now spreading to most industries, including energy and cleantech. In simple words, the open innovation concept encourages […]
It is getting more and more difficult for American and European cleantech companies to raise funding. Today, one can rarely find such massive investments from venture capitalists as it was possible in the early days of cleantech rush. A lot of cleantech investors have lost their money and many of them have left the sector. […]
Basic research has played and continues to play a central role in the evolution of the energy sector. Historically, fundamental science has driven the development of new innovative technologies that have enabled disruptive changes in industries, economies and societies. In order to achieve the goal of global transition to sustainable and low-carbon energy, we need […]
According to ‘’Waste Heat Recovery : Technologies and Opportunities in U.S. Industry’’ report published by the U.S. Department of Energy, 20 to 50% of all energy input in the U.S. industrial sector is lost as waste heat in the form of hot exhaust gases, cooling water, and heat lost from hot equipment surfaces and heated […]
When we think about technological startups, the first image that comes to our mind is a group of guys with a revolutionary idea writing a code in a garage that hopes to become the next Facebook or a Twitter. To build their ideas startups will try to attract venture capital firms who are looking for […]